Kirk Herbstreit recalls own college career to illustrate latest disgust with transfer portal
By Keith Farner
Published:
ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit has long been a critic of the transfer portal, at least at the volume it currently exists in college sports.
Much of Herbstreit’s opinion is informed by his own experience at Ohio State when he leaned on a team psychologist to help him through a difficult time. He said on the ACC Network’s “Packer and Durham” that he would not have made it through that time without the mentorship of the psychologist.
“It’s just something back in 1990, nobody went to go see the team psychologist,” Herbstreit said, per 247Sports. “I was to a point where I was moving positions. I was the typical 5-star recruit who was supposed to start for 4 years, ran a wishbone triple-option offense in high school, and went to play at Ohio State, didn’t even know what offense the new head coach was going to run. I committed and I was gonna be a Buckeye regardless. Elmer Fudd could have been the coach of Ohio State, I was going to fulfill a lifelong dream.”
Herbstreit explained that he committed to the program, and not a coach. So when the offense changed, it wasn’t easy.
“I was a Buckeye,” he said. “And so even though I could have gone to any school in the country, I just wanted to go there, and so when they brought in a West Coast offense, it didn’t fit and man was it a struggle for me. I moved positions — I was a wedge-buster on kickoff coverage, I was on kickoff return, I was holding on field foals, everything but what I wanted to do. And it was discouraging and frustrating. I wanted to quit and go play baseball.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
